New FO For May

It's time for the New FO party over at Cat Patches. In her role as "head enabler" Barbara says to just start something, no need to finish, pile them all over the house, just start something :)

I've already shown these two, but since I made them this month I'm showing them again, I like them

These are what I ended up when I started a completely different quilt, still no sign of the original quilt and there probably won't be, I obviously didn't want to make that quilt. 

I used the last of my Honey Honey by Kate Spain, I love everything she does and this just made me happy.

So much beautiful color and it was fun to just make the designs and see what I ended up with. 

Since that was so much fun I cut more HST's, if you've read my other post about those first two quilts, you know that I've been completely out of my mind  slightly distracted. I figured out how many HSTs I needed, then without thinking I cut them so I'd have four of each, I have a huge pile, 4 times more than I needed and ended up not liking the layout I'd planned.

There's a bizillion of them, that's just a small pile the rest are on my design wall, otherwise known as my bed. 

Here's the guy who pulled me out of my slump. I saw an ink and watercolor picture and of course thought of a quilt.

I sewed the strips together concentrating on the curves for his trunk, pretty much just making a piece of fabric that curved. Then I drew the head and tusks, cut him out and appliqued him down. I finished him just in time to put him into the Festival of Strings.
I'm already thinking about making more animals, he was fun and once I figured him out, it was easy. 

I'm going to cheat here, this is what I was working on when all heck broke out around here, it started as a simple star baby quilt, looked too small and simple so I added to it. 

Now it's big and I've thought about adding a little to the top and bottom to make it a twin size, maybe some log cabin hearts, your thoughts?
It ended up in the UFO pile because I thought it needed to be quilted with feathers, so I would just learn how and do it, remember I had lost my mind at this point :) Any ideas on quilting this, other than feathers? I'm practicing, but now I think they might be lost in the busyness of a log cabin.

Please hop on over to Cat Patches and help the enabler enable others.

Later gators,

Dana 

Festival of Strings

Ahhh, string quilts. I love them! Just pile up the strings, don't think and just sew. You can try to clean out that string box, but we know that will never happen, strings just make more strings. 

This is a string quilt I made back in January.

I measured the white for this one so the white "sashing" would be consistent, otherwise whatever piece I grabbed was sewn in.

Log Cabin blocks are my favorite for using up strings, I love the colors and traditional lay out. I used all one and a half strips for this one and happily made a major dent in my white pile. 

My most recent finish is a wall hanging. I had seen a pen and watercolor drawing that inspired me to make this:

I sewed the strings together, pretty much making a curved piece of fabric, drew a pattern and cut him out, then appliqued him to the white backing. He is easily my favorite string quilt and I'm already thinking about making more string "fabric". 

The Festival of Strings is going on right now over at Stitched in Color, I hope you'll check it out and be inspired.

Later gators,

Dana 

Happy Birthday Annie!

Happy Birthday Annie!

We are Maya Grace and Brady Bug and we've been invited to a birthday party for Annie over at Sew Many Ways.

Mom calls us "The Terrible Twins" but we're not really twins and we're pretty sure that terrible means "the best". 

Our human sister gave us our middle names.

I'm Brady Bug but most of my friends just call me Bug, mom says it has something to do with my personality. 

This is my sister and best friend Maya

She's kind of a princess and scared of everything, but I take really good care of her.

She can be pretty goofy too though.

Mom has written about us on her blog, she told our sad stories but now she says that's all in the past and we're just going to be happy.

We help mom with everything but we're best known for something called photo bombing.

 This one is my favorite

Can you see me right here at the bottom?

Anyway, let's get back to the beautiful Annie who is having her special day. I picked one of my favorite toys to give her, it's a leg, all that's left of a great toy, but I treasure it.

Mom said no, she had a better idea.

She heard about a little dog named Trooper

Trooper has 3 major fractures and he needs surgery really bad, so mom sent some money to Trooper in Annie's name. The card just says "For Trooper, from Annie". 

I think it would be better to have something you can chew or eat, but Mom says this is the best present. I hope Annie likes it.

Happy Birthday Annie from Maya and Brady.

My Life

Reading blogs this morning I came across this:

This Saturday, Karen at Sew Many Ways is having a birthday party for her Annie and everyone is invited to link up with pictures of their furbabies. Since I usually don't pass up a chance to show off the Terrible Twins, I think I'll be there. My blog is so dusty I thought I'd drop in and clean up.

Thanks to my friends who checked up on me, life has been... weird.

Here's a fast recap:

My friend's son died

My cat died

My daughter's cat was mauled by a dog (she's fine now)

My mother fell and broke her nose (she's fine too)

My aunt fell and is now in physical rehab (that's good)

It's been a tough couple of months. 

Needless to say, I've been distracted and couldn't settle on what to make next, I'd pull the fabric then wander off and decide to do something else. Then I saw a baby quilt in a magazine, basic block with smaller blocks for sashing and thought, I can do that fast and easy, use up some stash and break through this wall.

Debbie had written me an email that said "sew strips together", so perfect, I'll sew strips together and use that for the sashing. Then I decided to put 1/4" of white between the colors, that all looked so good I decided to make something in applique and use the strips as the fabric. So I drew an owl, made him in applique and he didn't match the strips :(

 So I put him in the middle of a log cabin. 

I still had the strips fabric I had made and went back to my original plan, except instead I cut it all up into HST's and made this:

No sign of the quilt I started out to make, but I did get two quilts.

In my craziness distracted thinking I bought EQ7 from one of the more well known quilt shops owned by a huge name in quilting, for some reason I thought this was a good time to learn how to use it, LOL. I bought it on the third, called last week to find out where it was, the women said I can't tell but it "should" be delivered soon, I called back today (20 days after ordering) and was told it will go out today, there was a problem with the California store faxing orders to the Paduka store. What!!!! May I suggest a new contraption called a computer. They made me cry....again.

The good news is Cori is coming home for the weekend. David is going out of town and although they both deny it, I think he called her and asked her to come watch me, he thinks I'll fill the house with strays. I told her to bring her bike, how else will we find those strays? 

Later gators,

Dana